Narked off with penny pinching and red tape about school trips -AIBU?

[MrFunnytheEasterBunny]

I teach in a secondary school. Today, we have we told that if we organise any trips (including a level biology field trip that they need to do some skills assessments) then we have to also factor in the cost of cover for teachers at £160 per teacher per day - so for the biology field trip, it's 5 days, 3 or 4 teachers depending on numbers!

I just don't think that it's fair/ right to pass that cost on to parents. Especially when the school employs cover supervisors! It will simply mean that the number of trips we run are severely reduced, to the detriment of the kids :-(

Would you be happy to pay potentially an extra £10 per day on the cost of a trip to pay for cover? Or AIBU?

It's a pain - our school gets around it by having two 'off timetable' weeks a year when all the trips are run, so cover costs don't exist. Either that, or swapping teaching with colleagues, although I'm not sure that is technically allowed under 'rarely cover' rules. KS5 lessons don't have to be covered, so 6th form only subject teachers are very in demand for trips.

Gosh that's a scary policy! I would have thought that would drastically reduce the number of trips being run: maybe that's the idea?

I'd be happy to pay it. Why should younger children lose out on learning because mine are on a trip?

Our school trips have always either been in an "activities week" or in the holidays. Solves the problem quite well.

I wouldnt expect my childrens school to not pass on the cost of staff.

But then again, my sons school can do 7 day week trips for less than £200 = because the master in charge is adept as sourcing youth hostels and not 5* hotels.

They do 5 day MFL trips to Madrid or the Opal Coast for marginaly less than £250

(including a level biology field trip that they need to do some skills assessments)

Ours mange to go to the local river , saturday, packed lunch. No cost to pupils.

Dd isn't school age yet but I wouldn't expect to have to pay for cover!

Trios - we don't have a local river and I don't work on Saturdays! :)

I get the whole having activities week etc, which we don't have, but the field trip has to be done at a particular time of year, too early and they won't see the right flora and fauna, and too late and we can't mark, moderate and submit it to the exam board in time!

Trois even, sorry iPad corrected me!

Really? most teachers will if need be.

My sons grammar school trecks up to the council estate for their Geography field trip - Christ knows what pond life they study up there that conforms to the NC.

Most teachers don't have a four yr old they have to look after, and nobody I know would traipse 40 miles into work on a Saturday to do something that should've done on school time for naff all recognition from the school, especially with a four yr old in tow!

You much work with an exceptionally dedicated bunch of teachers!

P.S. I love my job, don't get me wrong, but I work to give my son a good quality of life, therefore my time off is spent with him exclusively, as he spends a lot of time in nursery, so it's not a compromise I am prepared to make.

So what's the alternative? It's either less trips or other children having substandard teaching, unless I'm missing something. Rock and hard place comes to mind. As a parent, I wouldn't mind paying the extra, especially for trips that are optional.

I don't know what the alternative is, I suppose what we have done up until now!

We have a lot of very poor students whose parents just couldn't afford to pay if it was yet another £10. It seems a shame that they will miss out on valuable enrich,ent experiences. And I don't have a clue what they will do about biology/ geography field trips, I'm not available at weekends if that was their plan, I have to spend time with my son!

If you can afford to pay, it's fine I suppose, but I know more than half the kids I teach would be excluded from trips if that were the case.

So what have you done up until now? I'm interested in stuff like this just now as my ds is in y7 at a grammar school which has an excellent reputation, but I've been surprised at the number of lessons where he has had a substitute teacher.

We have cover supervisors, and also teachers in the school get one extra free per fortnight above our legal allocation where we canbe used for cover. Teachers who areill/ on trips/ on courses have to set cover for classes they teach on those days and it has to be excellent otherwise you get into trouble so the kids still get their lessons. I try to organise it so that the lessons fall that they would be doing an independent learning task anyway, with not much input from me, or a test, so that it doesn't matter that I am away.

I am an MFL teacher and I run an exchange trip for 9-10 days every year. We've had to pay our own cover for the past 2 years but we get around it by firstly using the minimum number of teaching staff-LSAs cost nothing so it's worth getting on well with the SENCo and borrowing one for a while if possible. We've also had past pupils who want to become teachers CRB checked and they've accompanied us as an adult for a small amount of pay. We also make sure that the trip takes place once Yr11 and Yr13 are on study leave, plus out of those 9-10 days, normally 3-4 of them are over weekends. We also try to save all of the "favours" that we've earned from colleagues where we've covered classes for them and use them while we're away. Plus we try to use members of teaching staff who have timetables that complement each other, i.e. not using colleagues who share frees or both teach at the same time but with yr11 and 13 gone we can sometimes only use 1 supply teacher to cover 2 of us. That one is quite difficult though!

Obviously we could still save money by only using a few of these suggestions but hopefully they may work for you.

Our school only take kids on residentials during school holidays.

At our school, a lot of residential trips are in the school holidays, plus, as someone has also mentioned, trips in school time often take place on "enrichment days" when the timetable is suspended for three days and the school gets involved in themed activities, at various levels, covering a 3 day residential (for about £250 at a Youth Hostel with walking, climbing, etc), to two days at school with a trip to Go Ape (about £60) to activites based in school where various organisations come in and do fun things (like bring a climbing wall with them) - at no cost. Cover for missed lessons isn't needed.